


It Always Came Down to Jenny

by justsleepwalkin



Series: Family Ties [2]
Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-30
Updated: 2011-12-30
Packaged: 2017-10-28 12:05:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,520
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/307700
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/justsleepwalkin/pseuds/justsleepwalkin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Well, it wasn’t the first time the Doctor had found himself unwillingly a part of someone’s twisted idea of a game, and it likely wouldn’t be the last.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It Always Came Down to Jenny

The underground complex is like a jungle, thick vines wrapping around grime covered pipes, stagnant mist at every twist and turn. They inch through it in silence, careful of the occasional rat scurrying over rubble and chittering up a loud fuss.

They push aside spider webs at the next junction, and settled snugly amongst a crevice, a rusty, ancient appearing phone rings – a shrill sound echoing down the rest of the corridor. Jenny jerks away from it, then with a bit of hesitation, reaches a hand back towards the receiver.

“Don’t answer it,” both the Doctor and the Master say quickly.

The girl drops her hand, turning to look over her shoulder at them. “We can’t just keep going on like this,” she insists. “It’s getting a bit foolish, don’t you think?” But she sighs, kicking her foot at an edge of the wall, then continues down this new corridor.

“We don’t exactly have much of a choice, Jenny,” the Doctor tells her, shoving hands into the pockets of his brown jacket and eying the phone as they walk past.

“I thought we always had a choice?”

“Your father likes changing rules, Jenny.” The Master shrugs. He’s appeared the most calm since they’ve found themselves here, but even his nerves were beginning to stretch too far beyond. At every junction was a phone, and every phone would ring, and while such a simple thing should be perfectly harmless, it wasn’t.

They were being hunted; it was a game, one that the Master had organized and played several times himself in his life. However, the three of them were the prey. This complex stretched across the entire planet, contained in its underground. Somewhere on the surface was the TARDIS, as well as the creatures who captured and put them down here to ‘play.’ The three of them were certainly not the only players – they each had stumbled across several bodies, some decayed, some just losing the last of their breath.

It had been days since they arrived, but at least now the three of them finally found one another in the mess of a place. Their separation had been the source of most of the Doctor’s stress.

“Do we at least have a plan?” Jenny asks, unable to keep silent.

“Remain calm,” the Doctor states. “Too many lose their lives because they act out rashly.” He sighs. He knew it from experience, reaching out to try and stop an earlier companion and then watching the repercussions unfold. “We need to find a way to the surface, get to the TARDIS.”

“Or create our own way there,” the Master adds. He was leaning towards that direction, now that they had a more familiar idea of the layout they were dealing with.

“We’ll only have more problems on our hands if we bring down the complex.”

“At least then our captors would be willing to show themselves.”

The Doctor glares at him sharply. “It isn’t the answer.”

The Master rolls his eyes. He preferred wandering the complex on his own, minus the experience of nearly falling into a trapped pit. He could do without that moment of helplessness. Otherwise? It was a great idea.

Approaching another junction, they all draw to an instant halt when silence greets them. “That hasn’t happened before,” Jenny voices their thoughts, looking around for the phone, which sits quietly on its rest. “Maybe it’s a key!”

The Master feels the Doctor’s wary gaze on him, but he’s found something else to distract him. A pair of eerie glowing lights shifting in the distance down the corridor to their left – company, more than likely. He looks back to see the perfect example of failed parenting. No wonder the Doctor didn’t have any children left; it had nothing to do with the genocide of Gallifrey, and all to do with _his bad genes_.

“I’ve had enough!” Jenny exclaims, face tightened in teenage rebellion. “We can’t just keep wandering around here! How do we know the phones aren’t meant to help us?”

“Jenny, stop it. I really don’t think that’s the answer, and trust me, I’ve been around long enough to know these things!”

“You’ve also been around long enough to grow more daft!”

“ _Jenny_.”

She huffs, reaches out, and before either of them can stop her, she lifts the receiver from its cradle and puts it to her ear. She blinks once, twice, and as the Doctor sputters and reaches for her, the receiver falls and rattles against the grime covered wall, Jenny is nowhere in sight.

The Doctor stares, arms outstretched, mouth agape. “…She… Jenny…” And then his anger creeps up to the surface and he clenches his fists, yelling out to the ceiling, “ _NO_! Give her back to me!”

“Doctor, I think we have more pressing matters to concern ourselves with,” the Master drawls.

“More pressing matters? What could be more pressing? I just lost my daughter, Master! _Again_!”

“Well, we both know your parenting skills aren’t exactly up to snuff. I’m sure the social workers of the universe would _love_ to put her into a fitting foster home. Not that she would stay. Your genes, after all.” He sniffs, not once having looked back at the Doctor. “Still, yes. Might I suggest you pay more attention to Long, Scaly, and Hungry?”

The Doctor, ready to lash out at the Master, takes pause and glances down the corridor the other has his gaze so firmly locked to and horror rushes through his veins. He looks towards the discarded phone receiver, then back up at the red eyes and rows of teeth from the giant, snake-like reptilian slithering its way towards them.

The Master focuses on one strand of the drumbeat to ease himself, takes a step backward to the Doctor’s side, reaches out, grabs the other’s arm, and then bolts right in time for teeth to cut into stray vines and grab through the air for them.

“But Jenny –” the Doctor argues, tripping over rubble and jumping to get his balance and into a proper run.

“Can’t help your wayward blood if we’re dead, Doctor! Common sense! Use it once and awhile!” It would do them all a _lot_ better if the Doctor used it more often. There would be so many situations that they never got into if the Doctor simply used his head. But no! He had to rush into things! And Jenny was _exactly_ the same!

He only hopes that Jenny never gets into a relationship. The last thing the universe needed was the Doctor’s genetic line continuing.

Hot breath follows in their wake, and the Master thinks he feels a lick of a tongue brush against his leg as they round a corner, cringing at the echo of ringing. This was many kinds of not-good. He had seen other creatures in the complex, yes, but none quite so life-threatening and huge in size. Perhaps their keepers had finally gotten tired of them and had ordered their prompt disposal.

Hearts pounding, the creature doesn’t slow down, still fresh on their heels. His drumming reels when the Doctor lets out a cry and he spins around in a panic, watching as the creature sweeps the Doctor off his feet by the tail of his jacket.

 _That’s_ what he gets for dressing like a hero.

The Master slams his full body into the creature’s gullet, dragging out his laser screwdriver from a pocket and slicing through a portion of rough scales while the Doctor shimmies out of his jacket and hits the ground. A howl of pain rips from the creature and it flares away from the burning of the laser, a gurgle and a stream of ooze slathering over its jaw line.

“ – _Master_!” the Doctor shouts out, scrambling back to his feet, eyes wide as he stares back at his companion in a panic. He just lost Jenny. He _cannot_ , by any means, lose the Master as well.

The Master doesn’t need the cue. Screwdriver unable to do anymore damage with the creature further away, he turns on his heel and runs. The rage of the beast echoes along the walls, and it isn’t only them that are running now – rats from all nooks and crannies flow out around them and dip into other holes, hiding as much as they can from the impending ravager.

“We really can’t keep up like this. Doesn’t it ever get _tired_?” the Doctor hisses, casting a glance over his shoulder. The creature’s movements have become more erratic, crashing into the corridor’s sides as blood continues to coast down its neck. It twitches and thrashes, like it can’t reach the most irritant of itches, but despite having slowed down, it continues its hunt.

Every turn of the complex was nearly the same, save for the vine work and the spider webs. They had yet to find any dead ends; four paths total at every junction. It was good because they wouldn’t get trapped, it was bad because they had nothing to _use_.

The Doctor draws in a sharp breath and curses to himself, then reaches out a hand towards the Master. “Give me your screwdriver,” he demands. He may have lost his prized jacket, but he still has his sonic. How could he have forgotten?

The Master shoots him a confused look, but it's brief, and realization is quick to settle in and he hands off the device, jumping off into one branch of a corridor in the next junction while the Doctor falls back into the opposing one. He flips the settings on the tools, shares a knowing glance with the Master, and then fires out a resounding twist of ethereal sound, bombarding the walls and amplifying further, only to crash down on the slithering creature as it begins to pass.

The entire corridor shakes at the sound. The Master cricks his head against its ear-piercing waves, sidestepping loose material that shakes freely. The creature wails, head scraping up at the ceiling from the sudden shock, bringing down more of the corridor before them until it manages to somehow reverse its entire body and finally flee.

The sound winds to silence, and the Master finds himself staring at rock walling, breathing hard. He staggers over to the rubble almost blocking his path entirely, peering into the darkness above where it came, then idly plucks at a piece of stone and tosses it aside.

“Doctor?”

There’s a scuffle from the other side, and then, “Yeah,” a cough, “I’m here.”

He picks at more of the stone, not in any effort to clear it away, only to give his hands something to do. Another glance into the hole above proved useless. He’d need a source of light to see if there was anything they could work with above.

“Hey,” he calls out, “get over here. I’m sure you can figure the corridors out enough for that. I need the screwdrivers.”

More coughing follows, and the Doctor doesn’t answer right away. When he does, his breath comes out in ragged wheezes. “I think you coming here may be all the more wise.”

The Master frowns. “And why is that?”

“Just trust me on this, would you,” the Doctor snaps.

“Fine.” Begrudgingly, the Master maps out in his mind the path he’ll need to take to get to the Doctor’s position, and then he sets off, wondering what trouble the idiot got himself into this time. Probably just mourning the loss of his jacket. That would _so_ be like him. It would take a matter of left turns and straight walking to get to the other Time Lord, five junctions in total. Easy.

He ignores the ringing phone at the first. When he reaches the second, he freezes.

“I figured it out,” a voice whispers nearby. He thinks it’s Jenny, but when he wheels around in a complete three-sixty, he’s alone. The voice continues, “I knew it.”

The third junction is much the same: “I knew it, Master. You gotta tell Dad.”

Fourth: “It’s important! Come on!”

At the fifth, the phone rings like normal and the air is devoid of whisperings. His hand hovers over the rusty receiver, _so_ close to picking it up and demanding what was going on, but he gets a hold of himself and makes it the rest of the way to the Doctor’s corridor without incident.

The Doctor is strewn out on the ground, the screwdrivers several feet away from him, and the Master picks them up when he gets close. “You’re supposed to watch for falling rubble when you pull a stunt like that,” the Master snaps, cocking his head up a notch and surveying the wounds that the Doctor did not have before.

“I hadn’t exactly thought about how severe it would react to the sound,” the Doctor admits from where he sat, wedged oddly between the wall and the rubble. “What took you so long?”

“Nothing,” the Master mutters, and he steps over the Doctor’s legs and checks for stable rock that he can climb to get a better look above. “And if you’re complaining, you could have come instead. You can walk in your state, it isn’t like your legs were crushed.”

“I didn’t want to.”

“Of course,” he scoffs. “And you call me petulant.” He gets into a steady position and holds both screwdrivers in one clenched hand, merging their warm glows into one light as best he could to shine into the darkness.

“Why couldn’t she just listen…”

Hn. The lights barely pierced the darkness. For all he knew it could be miles of some sort of abyss, hollowed out to discourage any sort of escape. “Maybe she was right. Maybe it was the right thing to do. Maybe she’s off giving our captors hell right now.” Still, even if the planet’s surface was a distance away, they could possibly use this opening to their advantage. Time Lords know how to walk amongst darkness, or at least they do.

The Doctor’s face scrunches up in dislike. “How could you even suggest that?”

“I thought you were a fan of hope. It’s possible, you know.”

“I saw people _die_ when they answered that call,” the Doctor utters bitterly, “they burned to ash, or were electrified. Some became a skeleton, standing lifelike for a few moments before toppling into a broken heap. Others cried out my name in fear before babbling incoherently and curling to the ground with the receiver unmovable from their cold hands; they were dead, but some sick person still forced their vocal cords into continuing.”

“And Jenny just disappeared. No theatrics, just gone,” the Master asserts, knocking some of the rubble into other corridors so that he could climb higher. “Not even a dead body to look at,” he hums.

“ _I know_!” the Doctor sneers. “You don’t have to rub it in!”

“I’m not trying to, idiot. I’m just saying that we have no evidence that she’s dead, so stop mourning until you have proof and start trying to be of some _help_.”

The Doctor falls silent.

It was hard to get a grip without pulling anymore of the ceiling apart, but after testing several holds, the Master was able to heave himself up into the dark abyss, hands sliding amongst cool stone. He waves the pair of screwdrivers like a torch along the surface, but sees nothing except for a constant floor of the same stone. “What’s important, Jenny?” he whispers to himself, frowning in deep thought. Had it just been the underground messing with his mind after all this time? Or had she actually found some way to speak? “What did you figure out?”

He sits himself on surface, hanging legs down into the hole, and listens to the drumming as he stares into the abyss, feeling like he was in Utopia all over again, but there were no screams of the dying human race here. Almost complete silence.

“Find anything?” the Doctor calls up.

He’d been _enjoying_ that near-silence.

“Darkness, darkness – oh! – and more darkness. Pretty drab on the scenery.” He peers over the edge and sees the Doctor looking back, on his feet. “We could travel this way, or stick to the corridors. Your choice. At least there are no phones up here.”

“…My choice?” the Doctor blinks back at him, genuinely surprised.

“Yes,” the Master snaps, “and make up your mind before I change mine.”

“I – well…” The Doctor stops and settles back, truly giving the question some thought. The Master lets him have the time. “Will we even be able to get back if we travel above?”

“With enough of the right applied force? Probably.”

“Probably isn’t quite what I’m looking for.”

“Well, fine, be that way,” the Master huffs and jumps back down, tossing the Doctor his sonic and ignoring how he fumbles to catch it, and strides back the way he came. He has a theory to test out, anyway.

“Hey, wait up!” The Doctor hurries to his side, quickly popping around to get a good look at him. “What is _wrong_ with you?”

“ _Nothing_.”

“Right. Like I’m going to believe that, Master. You never spout ‘hope nonsense’, offer me a choice, or act any of the way that you have been.”

“I think the key is in the phones.”

The Doctor’s expression hardens. “No, not you too. I’m not letting it happen.”

“I think she found a way, Doctor,” he insists, spinning to face the Doctor full on. “She’s as stubborn as you, but with less of your fear of the consequences.”

“That’s because I know better! I’ve learned! I know the consequences of my actions!” Most of the time. Other times he simply ignores them, but that’s just it – he knows when he _can_ ignore them. “She’s just a kid! Barely even aged! And she has a knack for finding danger!”

“And you _don’t_? Get off your high horse, Doctor. You’re as much of a child as she is.” He pivots away and opens his arms to the junction, laughing with his head thrown back. He shoots wild eyes at the Doctor. “And you see this?” He points to the snug phone. “ _This_ is what your rash young daughter found. A phone that does not ring. I wonder what would happen, Doctor?” He moves a hand towards it, then quickly finds himself pushed roughly into vines, something crushing under his back.

“ _Don’t_ ,” the Doctor whispers warningly. “Why must you both –”

“Because it’s _right_ , Doctor. It’s the answer staring everyone in the face. Oh come on! It’s a _mind_ game for god’s sake!” he yells. Then, a grin, and he drawls, “You know how much I love mind games, Doctor. Except when they’re turned on me. Really, it’s been a real learning experience, but I’m done playing the game now.” He shoves the Doctor away from him and points towards the phone. “Pick it up.”

“No.”

“ _Pick it up_ ,” he says more forcefully. “What are your consequences? You die, you regenerate. So what. Life goes on, you go on. Maybe you’ll be less stringy and whiny, but I doubt it. Or I could do it; I’m fine with doing it, see. You care about doing everything on your own, after all. If Jenny and I are wrong, you’ll be better off anyway.”

“That isn’t true! Master, now _isn’t_ the time for – for whatever this is!”

“But it is, isn’t it? It’s the perfect time, Doctor. The only time.” This is all about those pesky trust issues that they haven’t had come up in many, many years now, but they all boiled to the surface again, and it all came down to _Jenny_. “You need to make a decision and stick with it.”

There’s a buzz around the air. Jenny’s voice, disjointed and muddled, breaks through their arguing: “Dad! _Dad_! I found it out!”

The Doctor looks terrified. “Do you…?” he starts, but he doesn’t know how to finish the question.

“Yes, I hear her,” the Master answers. “I heard her earlier, and I originally thought it may just be the underground mist getting to my head, but no. I think she really figured it out.”

“But then why not just tell me that –”

“As if you would have believed me,” the Master snaps, and he picks up the phone. He remembers Jenny’s eyes fill with recognition when she had performed the same act, and now the Master feels that same moment, even as the Doctor’s desperation begins to ripple out of view.

_“You’re a winner! Thank you for playing. Please hold while Transport takes place.”_

And without any theatrics, he found himself from the dank corridor and displaced in a small room, surrounding him on all sides with steaming machinery making _quite_ the racket. He brushes his hands down his slacks, straightens, and heads out the only door he sees.

He’s greeted with an unexpected armful of Jenny. “It’s about _time_! Where’s Dad?”

The Master pushes her off him. “Likely mourning my death, and probably yours again, too. How did you make contact with us? We’ll likely have to use that trick if he’s ever going to get over himself and get here. Wherever here is. Do you have any idea of that little tidbit of information?”

“I’ve been trying to keep low. I _was_ actually waiting for you two; I thought Dad would have at least appreciated that, but he’s being so slow! But I figured that the game’s hosts are a floor above, and that the TARDIS is somewhere on the floor below!” She beams at him, proud of what she’s managed to accomplish for being soldier-born. She had some help from other ‘winners’, but he didn’t need to know that.

“And I’m going to give the locals a hard talking to when I find them.”

The Master and Jenny turn sharply.

“ _Dad_!” Jenny exclaims, throwing her arms around the Time Lord tightly. “I knew you would pull through!”

“Don’t ever,” he starts, pulling her away at arm’s length, hands grasping her shoulders as if making sure she was really there, “do that again.” He glances at the Master, the same message directed at him by his eyes.

“Of course not!” Jenny chirps. She won’t do it again for the next, oh, week, probably.

“Both of you, find the TARDIS. I’m shutting this operation down.”

“But –”

“No buts, Jenny.”

“He’s punishing us, dear,” the Master tells her, grinning in the background.

Jenny sighs, folding her arms. “I just want to watch.”

“Maybe next time, when you don’t decide to give me a scare that you’ve gone and died on me,” he says, shaking a finger at her. “Try not to do anything stupid, either of you,” he finishes, and then he sweeps away, missing the flow of his jacket dearly, and he heads off to do business with the folk upstairs.

Unfortunately for the remaining two, getting downstairs where ships were held was proving to be difficult. Apparently escaping wasn’t a prize for being a ‘winner.’

“Run!”

“But Dad – if we have problems, he must be having them, too!”

“Oh please, he’s fine! He’s just making friendly with the locals!” And by friendly, the Master meant that he was trying to weasel himself out of the situation by talking and slowly getting out of the room. A backfired plan of his, likely. The Master, to some extent, had faith in him.

“But –”

“ _Trust me_ , he does this all the time!” And _that_ was completely true. Still, she was having trouble believing him, and stubborn as her father, she comes to a full stop, giving him an insistent look. “ _What_?” he snaps, turning towards her. At one time, he may have doubted that the pair was related at all.

If he learned anything from this excursion, it was how damn believable their relation was now.

“How do you know he’s going to be okay? He’s not a soldier, he says! He won’t be able to take them!”

“It’s _politics_ , dear!” he snaps again, then grabs her arm and drags her. What a petulant child. She can be as reluctant as she wants, but he’ll still win this fight. He should have taken the Doctor’s place. Dealing with the locals would have been much more simple than dealing with Jenny, and he probably would have done a better job, anyway. But the Doctor likely wanted to extract revenge, even if he would never call it that. “You’re a piece of work, do you know that?” he huffs, glancing around a corner to see the TARDIS standing safely down the hall.

Taking one more look the way they came, he ducks down the hall towards the TARDIS, only to hit up against an invisible shielding. He growls and runs a hand over it, then slams a fist. “No, no, no. Not now! Dammit… where…” There had to release switch somewhere… This place was practically falling apart, rusted hatches at every turn. They couldn’t possibly keep the TARDIS shielded from him for long.

Jenny folds her arms and leans against a wall, watching, then decides to play distraction. She asks: “What’s your relationship with my dad?” And the Master, caught off guard, stares back at her as if she’s lost her mind.

“Is now _really_ the appropriate time for that?” he asks quickly, wishing she would do something a bit more _useful_. Is that so much to ask for? Sure she helped get them to the surface level in the first place, but that didn’t mean she had to _stop_. And where the hell _was_ the Doctor, anyway?

She doesn’t seem very put off, however. He glares. “We’re…” They weren’t something he wanted to think about; it was an answer that he ignored every day and every minute, and for Jenny to ask him, he suddenly hated her. “…acquaintances,” he finishes evenly, and _ah_ , there’s what he was searching for to cut the shield’s power!

He grins victoriously as it whines and shuts down, glancing smugly back to Jenny, only to find that she’s playing the unhappy teenager card and looking at him as though he told her something she didn’t want to hear. Well. Her own fault.

He briskly walks to the TARDIS and unlocks it, just as the Doctor whirls the corner with a wild face. “In!” he tells them, as if they were being _silly_ just standing there, “in, in, in! Gotta go now!”

The Master pushes open a door and the Doctor rushes in. “See, Jenny?” the Master says to her, “politics. Time to go!” She pushes past him coldly, and he holds up his hands in defense, wondering just what the heck he did. They leave shortly after, and Jenny avoids them both. The Master listens to the Doctor’s story about his ‘issues’ with the locals and how it went from very bad to very worse, but he successfully sabotaged the majority of their project. It’s normal, everyday life for them.

When the Doctor comments in surprise that Jenny didn’t want to hear how the story ended and wonders where she is, the Master just shrugs it off.

It isn’t _his_ fault.

It always came down to Jenny.

**Author's Note:**

> RIP brown jacket.


End file.
